Banquo’s Ghosts
Reader F.W. writes to draw my attention to Rich Lowry’s spy thriller Banquo’s Ghosts commenting “apparently he managed to pack every imaginable vapid right-wing cliché into his “forthcoming literary masterpiece”:
Lowry: Here’s the basic plot: Peter Johnson is a left-wing journalist who writes for a New York-based publication called The Crusader. He’s a lush, a cynic, and a little corrupt. But watching the 9/11 attacks from his Brooklyn Heights apartment changes something in him. He begins to have doubts about the “hate America” pieces his editrix, Josephine von Hildebrand, constantly assigns him. Meanwhile, an old forgotten CIA spymaster, Stewart Bancroft (he works under cover of the name Banquo), has an eye on him. Banquo is old school. He’s been marginalized in the new overly bureaucratic, politically correct CIA, as an anachronism who believes in aggressively and imaginatively taking the fight to the enemy. He concludes that the best possible man to send to kill Iran’s top nuclear scientist is the one no one would suspect–the unreliable, famously America-hating Peter Johnson. And then, as they say, mayhem ensues.
In Lowry’s defense, the idea of Christopher Hitchens reacting to 9/11 not by abandoning his Nation column in favor of a Slate column, but instead by becoming an assassin is pretty amusing.
Also there are tons and tons of vapid right-wing clichés that aren’t involved in this plot sketch. My recollection of the Tom Clancy book in which Jack Ryan becomes President is that not only does he do a bunch of right-wing national security stuff, but he also implements common sense domestic policy solutions like a flat tax.
71 Responses to “Banquo’s Ghosts”
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April 2nd, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Mayhem ensued? What happened to the hijinx? I’ve never heard of anything other than hijinx ensuing.
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:20 pm
I, too, hated America before 9/11. All of us lefties did.
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:21 pm
What’s very sad is that this book will no doubt shoot to the top of the NY Times and Amazon’s best-seller list, beating out Mark Levin’s recent hysterical “Liberty and Tyranny,” and earning Lowry many thousands of dollars.
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:22 pm
So how exactly does the bumptious alcoholic writer get the opportunity to assassinate Iran’s top nuclear scientist?
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Editrix???
I liked that Tom Clancy novel. I mean, we all know that if the tough conservative new president openly wept at a memorial service in the National Cathedral for the all those who had fallen in the same attack that elevated him into the presidency, we all know the superficial liberal media would just excoriate him.
For Al’s sake, consider that last paragraph in airquotes.
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Peter Johnson?
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Is there something that compels pundit personalities to write crappy fiction?
LizardBreath, “hilarity” sometimes ensues, too. In fact, I think this synopsis would have been much improved if it ended with “And then, as they say, hilarity ensues.”
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:25 pm
THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS!! FOR HILLARY!!!
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:27 pm
“Josephine said, I think we have a lead that will bring the CIA to their knees and expose the Founding Fathers as hateful bigots all in one. Peter I want you on this one; this will be a great story.”
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:36 pm
his editrix, Josephine von Hildebrand
Josephine von Hildebrand! Hahahahahaha! Seriously, the second you see a name like that on the page is the second you drop the book and back away in horror. Oh Chris, that’s hilarious.
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:38 pm
“Editrix???”
This is probably a thinly disguised Katrina Vanden Heuval who is actually quite nice and doesn’t hate America.
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:38 pm
My recollection of the Tom Clancy book in which Jack Ryan becomes President
Oh, man, I remember that one. Luckily for us, he seems to have realized that if he doesn’t want to be edited, the easier way is to have someone else write his books.
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Dammit. There we go.
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I once read a great review of one of these reactionary potboilers. After mentioning all the international spy intrigue type of stuff, the reviewer noted that “These are the kinds of fantasies American boys have to put up with before they discover sex.”
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:43 pm
He concludes that the best possible man to send to kill Iran’s top nuclear scientist is the one no one would suspect–the unreliable, famously America-hating Peter Johnson.
The best possible man to send to kill Iran’s top nuclear scientist is an unreliable, famously America-hating journalist with no covert skills or knowledge of the language or country? See, if it was me I’d assume that the possible man to send to kill Iran’s top nuclear scientist would be, say, a ruthless combat-trained Farsi-speaking Iranian who can blend into the population and who’s opposed to the theocratic regime and has been working with the CIA for years (you know they exist), or else I’d just ask the Israelis to take care of it. But hey, that’s probably because I’m one of those overly bureaucratic, politically correct guys rather an imaginative and aggressive thinker….
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:44 pm
I bet it’s as good as Norman Mailer’s “Harlot’s Ghost!”
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:48 pm
They want all the prestige literary types get without having to work for it the way literary types generally do.
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:49 pm
I suspect some of the sex scenes might end up written like this.
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:51 pm
He concludes that the best possible man to send to kill Iran’s top nuclear scientist is the one no one would suspect–the unreliable, famously America-hating Peter Johnson.
Why does it have to be someone no one would suspect, rather than someone who’d actually be competent to do the job? If non-suspiciousness if your main criteria, why isn’t, say, a Kalahari Bushman or an elderly Swiss grandmother even less suspect than an American?
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Wow, a Macbeth reference. Nothing adds class like a pointless Shakespeare riff–just ask the writers of Star Trek. I particularly like how “Banquo” is such a cunning code-name for a man whose actual name is “Bancroft.” Look out, John le Carre!
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Well, let’s hope that this brilliant literary masterpiece can stop our slide into happy fascism. By the way, which of Mao’s 9 principles and 12 inanities and 3 represents or 100 flowers — or whatever — does this book promote? I hope someone brings it to the camps, anyway…
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:04 pm
I thought April Fool’s Day was yesterday.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Or the Spanish Inquisition. No one suspects them.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Recall that Lowry’s mentor, William F. Buckley, also wrote these types of spy novels. These so-called up and coming right wing elites so often follow the
same career paths of their mentors.
This reminds me of how right wing female elite Elaine Chao, Mitch McConnell’s wife and ex-Secretary of Labor, followed the EXACT same career path as Elizabeth Dole-marry Senator, become head of Red Cross (or United Way), become head of Federal agency…
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Jeffrey Davis, that was the exact place where I had to stop reading Patriot Games. Nice to know someone else found it high-larious. (I think Ryan actually said something like, “Just a second, Prince…”)
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Yes, Gabriel, “Peter Johnson.” He’s a black belt, having studied under Enormous Genitals.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:26 pm
PAUL KRUGMAN SUPPORTS THE GEITHNER PLAN!!! Click on my link to read the whole interview.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:28 pm
I’m hoping that you all realize you can read random excerpts of this book with Amazon.com’s “surprise me” feature:
http://www.amazon.com/reader/1593155085?_encoding=UTF8&ref_=sib_aps_sup&qid=1238707116&page=random
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Al, I’m sorry, did you need some scare quotes in there?
Fritz: a million points for the reference. A fistful of yen for you.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Zach: Good call.
That’s from page 333, and it sounds like the plot is just getting started…
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:36 pm
“Recall that Lowry’s mentor, William F. Buckley, also wrote these types of spy novels.”
The difference is that Buckley could actually write and his Blackford Oakes books, at least the ones I’ve read, have a level of nuance that would make Lowry’s head explode.
Mike
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:37 pm
The gleaming new shower head could have been picked by the producers of Extreme Make-Over: Home Edition.
Could it have? Really?
And the tub sported the damnedest shower curtain she had ever seen.
The damnedest, I say!
You could zip it up all around to totally enclose a bather–a shower for the Boy in the Bubble.
Not only enclose, but totally enclose. Not like one of those namby-pamby partial enclosements.
And is someone taking a shower really a bather?
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:37 pm
If anyone is unfamiliar with the hateful troll “Christian Weston Chandler”, also going by other variations on the same name including the initials, be warned and do not click any link it supplies – they tend to go to truly vile images.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:39 pm
The difference is that Buckley could actually write
And that Buckley had actually served as a spy for the CIA.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Front or back door–make a decision. Front or back? She headed to the back.
No, no, the front! The front! You stupid idiot!
Through the kitchen window she saw some lady from the house next door hanging wet laundry on a line.
Hanging wet laundry on the line? Ah, so this book takes place in 1977. Like “Lost.”
A Rottweiler with a studded collar was doing his business in the other adjacent backyard.
Of course the Rottweiler has a studded collar. Of course. Leave no cliche unturned.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Y’know, when I saw the “editrix Josephine von Hildebrand” I was wondering what Katrina Vanden Heuvel would think about her colleague – arguably as the editor of the largest right-wing weekly her opposite number – putting hateful words in so transparent a parody of herself. But now that I see from tomemos’s blockquote that Lowry is using Sy Hersh’s real name I rather wonder (as a layperson) whether Lowry is familiar with the laws about libel and slander, both here and in countries such as the UK that tend towards favoring the plaintiff.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:46 pm
“Watch,” Johnson said, “he’ll probably win a National Magazine Award for it.”
Then they discussed what was happening in response to the attack.
Ooooohhh! Nice segue.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:49 pm
There wouldn’t be a chance in the world of getting in trouble for name-a-likes. There’s an O’Hanlon, too, but I can’t figure out from the excerpt if this one exists in the novel solely to move the goalposts.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Those excerpts are craptastic.
He’ll make a million.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:56 pm
If anyone here truly loves me, they’ll post more random excerpts for me to mock….
April 2nd, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Golly. I think Brad Thor is getting a run for his money in the “Thriller as Whacking Material Nitwittery” department. I wonder if Lowry will also go on Glenn Beck and pout about all the death threats he’s getting.
April 2nd, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Stefan, Zach’s link, upthread works, but I can’t readily figure out how to cut-and-paste from there and I’m disinclined to spend time transcribing.
The link drops you in the book at random; I wound up with a lovely bit about Iran having no domestic industry of any sort and instead importing burkas from Israel and stitching “Made In Iran” labels on them. Whee!
April 2nd, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Editorial Reviews
Review
Brad Thor, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Last Patriot
“Banquo’s Ghosts is an intelligent, supercharged thriller. Rich Lowry & Keith Korman have crafted a scenario so real, and so frightening, that readers (both inside and outside the CIA) will undoubtedly lose sleep over it. This is what the modern espionage novel is all about.”
Rush Limbaugh, nationally syndicated radio host & political commentator
“Part send-up of the drive-by media and the New York cocktail circuit, part warning about the evils of our enemies and the necessity of eternal vigilance–Banquo’s Ghosts is all rollicking fun. You’ll learn, you’ll laugh, you’ll get mad, and you won’t want it to end.”
Sean Hannity, host of The Sean Hannity Show, Hannity & Colmes, and Hannity’s America
“Lowry and Korman skewer the pompous media and feckless bureaucracts in this wild ride of a novel. And they always come back to the central point: we live in a dangerous world and must never forget it.”
Robert K. Tanenbaum New York Times Bestselling author of Escape
“Rich Lowry and Keith Korman have written a dazzling debut political thriller. Banquo’s Ghosts is a brilliantly imagined and incredibly detailed novel about a CIA rogue special operation – terrifying in it’s depiction of a potential war with Iran and what the United States must do to prevent an attack of biological terrorism in a major American city. A fast-paced and chilling ride.”
Patrick Robinson, New York Times Bestselling author of To the Death
“Banquo’s Ghosts is a masterwork of political intrigue and riveting suspense. There are very few times when I can’t put a book down, but I had to read this twisting and gripping thriller late into the night.”
Mark Levin, host of The Mark Levin Show, nationally syndicated by ABC networks
“Banquo’s Ghosts is fiction that sounds all too real at time when the country is ham-strung by self-loathing at home and by self-limiting niceties abroad. Not just a good read, but an essential one.”
William J. Bennett, former United States Secretary of Education and Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy
“One of the year’s best thrillers involving assassination, terrorism, journalism, and international intrigue.”
April 2nd, 2009 at 6:20 pm
“One of the year’s best thrillers involving assassination, terrorism, journalism, and international intrigue.”
Being a writer, Bill Bennett surely knows that his use of a restrictive clause—rather than “One of the year’s best thrillers, involving…”—means that he’s praising Banquo’s Ghost as being one of the best *of the thrillers involving terrorism, journalism, and international intrigue* published this year. Talk about damning with faint praise.
April 2nd, 2009 at 6:24 pm
If anyone is unfamiliar with the hateful troll “Christian Weston Chandler”, also going by other variations on the same name including the initials, be warned and do not click any link it supplies – they tend to go to truly vile images
Fuck you Warren you stupid faggot. I’ll be sure to put something especially obscene on ObiWi just for you
April 2nd, 2009 at 6:27 pm
For more insight into urban mystique, search the Amazon page for “Nike Air Force 1 Scarface Edition basketball shoes” … no shit.
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:02 pm
“But who’s paying them to make those accusations? Web loggers? Why don’t we just call them what they are. Web Liars.
Oh, snap! Oh no he din’t!
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:08 pm
“…his editrix, Josephine von Hildebrand…”
So it’s a Harlequin Romance Novel then?
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Meanwhile, the Israelis really ARE the ones going around killing Iranian scientists.
It would be appropriate for Iran to retaliate by killing some Israeli politicians.
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:36 pm
First, “genocidaire”. Then, “editrix”. Where will the madness end?
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:54 pm
prase be to the Patriot Act
prase be to the Patriot Act
prase be to the Patriot Act
prase be to the Patriot Act
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:58 pm
“Sy Hersh has a piece in the The New Yorker [SIC] saying you held prisoners down and tortured them with pliers with your own hands,” Johnson told Banquo.
If he’s holding the prisoners down, he presumably needs two hands to do so. So what’s he holding the pliers with?
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:56 pm
For more of this kind of right wing vomit, see Vince Flynn.
Pure shite.
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:21 pm
“My recollection of the Tom Clancy book in which Jack Ryan becomes President is that not only does he do a bunch of right-wing national security stuff, but he also implements common sense domestic policy solutions like a flat tax.”
possibility #1: this is ironic as in you laugh
possibility #2: this is not ironic and you wonder if taxing already cashed-out trust funds by twenty-somethings living in cities is possible
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:33 pm
I have come to viscerally despise Christopher Hitchens when I encounter him other than in print, and often then, after having an early fling with the guy (I was young). But let me emphasize, I hate his guts, all the more since his latest Bill Maher appearance. But I do think it is inaccurate to say he ‘abandoned’ his Nation column. I’m pretty sure he was informed that his views were out of step with the editorial direction of the publication after coming out for the invasion of Iraq. I’m open to informed correction of that, however.
April 2nd, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Mike: No, he quit – and signed off with quite a wingnutty little rant:
“In the past few weeks, though, I have come to realize that the magazine itself takes a side in this argument, and is becoming the voice and the echo chamber of those who truly believe that John Ashcroft is a greater menace than Osama bin Laden.”
April 3rd, 2009 at 12:10 am
I must have misremembered something I heard him say once.
April 3rd, 2009 at 7:13 am
No discussion of Tom Clancy is complete without linking to the War Nerd’s epic takedown of him. So, there you go.
April 3rd, 2009 at 9:14 am
I guess this is a more exciting plot for a spy / adventure book than had Christopher Hitchens responded to the 9/11 attacks by vowing to drink bin Laden under the table and doing a consistent drag show in which he pretended George Orwell was all crazy for bombing the wogs.
April 3rd, 2009 at 9:38 am
Hanging wet laundry on the line? Ah, so this book takes place in 1977. Like “Lost.”
That, or it could take place in San Francisco, where washing machines are illegal. Also cigarettes, gun ownership and traditional family values.
April 3rd, 2009 at 9:48 am
Especially as it’s only April.
April 3rd, 2009 at 10:09 am
The sad thing is, the book sounds like there’s the germ of a good idea that’ll be horribly wasted. The whole odd couple or buddy cop trope is a cliché for a good reason: it can be the start of a good story. So here we have a scuzzy and flawed but just a tiny bit idealistic journalist, paired with a set-in-his-ways CIA guy haunted by decades of ghosts. For the movie version of “Banquo’s Ghosts,” I’d cast Al Pacino as the journalist, and for the spook, I’m thinking of an older version of Johnny Depp’s Agent Sands in “Once Upon a Time in Mexico.” Agent Sands wasn’t the main character, but even so he made the movie. He was amazing. Hiding a gun with a fake arm, shooting someone by sound… Once these guys get to the Middle East, anything could happen, maybe even some interesting emotional moments for unique characters.
But in Lowry’s version, the journalist is named “Peter Johnson,” and the CIA agent is James Bond without the sense of humor, and the narrative hits you over the head with partisan, out-of-date-before-it-was-published political commentary. Sad.
April 3rd, 2009 at 11:34 am
As far as Beltway-bred political thrillers are concerned, though, those are features, not bugs.
And that’s why Beltway pundits shouldn’t be allowed within one hundred miles of any film-making facility (pace Andrew Breitbart). Awful as Hollywood political thrillers can be, they could be much, much, worse.
April 3rd, 2009 at 1:37 pm
So don’t read the book
April 3rd, 2009 at 2:45 pm
“Peter Johnson,” really? peter and johnson……….wow.
April 3rd, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Peter Johnson?
Is his full name Peter Dick Rod Woody O’Toole Johnson?
April 4th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
thanks for all
April 9th, 2009 at 8:51 am
The style of writing is quite familiar to me. Have you written guest posts for other bloggers?